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Twitter’s CEO and Chairman, Jack Dorsey, this week that he will step away from the leadership of the social media company he co-founded almost 16 years ago.

The company’s CTO, Parag Agrawal, has assumed the role as CEO and has been unanimously named a member of the Board of Directors, effective immediately. Dorsey has also passed his Chairman role on the board to long-time board member and Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor.

Dorsey will retain a position on Twitter’s board until his term expires at the company’s annual stockholder meeting at some point in the spring of 2022 — the company’s previous meeting on May 27, 2021.

In a statement on Twitter, Dorsey said the company had considered a range of potential successors for his CEO post but that Agrawal had been his first choice “for quite some time given how deeply he understands the company and its needs.”

Dorsey went on to say: “Parag has been behind every critical decision that has helped turn this company around. He is curious, probing, rational, creative, self-aware, and humble. He leads with heart and soul, and is someone I learn from daily. My trust in him as our CEO is bone deep.”

Agrawal first joined Twitter as a software engineer in 2011 and was instrumental in spurring a resurgence in audience growth in 2016 and 2017 before being named CTO in 2017. Prior to his time at Twitter, he held research roles at AT&T, Microsoft and Yahoo!.

Dorsey remains the CEO of his other publicly traded company, Square, and said he decided to fully remove himself from Twitter to give Agrawal “the space he needs to lead.” He added, “I believe it is critical a company can stand on its own, free of its founder’s influence or direction.”

Twitter’s leadership change comes as the company grapples with several new challenges, including the long-term impacts of Apple’s privacy changes and continued criticism from conservative lawmakers about alleged censorship.

In his own , Agrawal concluded, “The whole world is watching us right now, even more than they have before. Lots of people are going to have lots of different views and opinions about today’s news. It is because they care about Twitter and our future, and it’s a signal that the work that we do here matters. Let’s show the world Twitter’s full potential.”